Ah, back to school season. It’s the time of year one spends flooded with relief that one no longer has to deal with the unholy stress of being a student. Unless one actually looks back upon their high school years with fondness, in which case you do you, you magical unicorn!

Many of us weren’t so lucky. Want to remind yourself of some of the horrors you lived through as a way to make yourself feel better about your current circumstances of being almost 30 and still having no clue what you want to do with your life? Of course you do! And so: Movies. Netflix Instant movies! Behold the hell you hath escaped.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Ferris Bueller is a goddamn blight on the universe. Not the movie. The movie’s great. But the character needs to be stabbed repeatedly with tiny pins. If high school Ferris existed in real life—and he does—you would want to smack him. Guy’s a jackass, and he never gets called on it except by his sister, who (IS RIGHT) gets dismissed. And yeah, the movie makes a good point that she’s too hung up on what he gets away with (with no repercussions whatsoever). But still. Ferris Bueller is a goddamn menace.

High School Hellcats
Sometimes you’re just in the mood to spend an hour watching a 1950s quasi-educational film about how disinterested parenting causes teenage girls to engage in shocking delinquent behavior like wearing slacks (gasp), getting drunk and playing party games (horror!), and murrrrrrrrderrrrrrrr. “Teenage Girls.. TANTALIZING… AND TERRORIZING!” Yeah, pretty much.

Heathers
But hey, no one in High School Hellcats ever tried to blow up their school. The ’50s were a simpler time. Have you watched Heathers lately? Go watch Heathers again.

Cry-Baby
Relatively speaking, Cry-Baby does not depict the worst high school experience one could have. Sure, there’s an insane level of class division and a smattering of gang warfare. No one ever goes to class (are there classes)? And the movie starts with students being stuck by giant scary needles. You can get locked up until you’re 21 by a corrupt justice system. OK, so it is pretty awful, but everything’s worked out pretty well for most everyone by the end of the movie.

But there’s the way the good guy Drapes decorate their “club,” for lack of a better word, with Confederate flags. I get that they’re “hicks,” and I get that John Waters revels in depicting things that mainstream society dismisses as disgusting and uncouth. But can we not? Please?

Mean Girls
I can never watch a movie where a character crosses the street without tensing up because I think they’re going to be hit by a bus. Mean Girls fucked me up.

The Craft
My high school experience might have been four years of unceasing, psychologically debilitating stress, but at least there weren’t amateur witches busting up all the big parties and killing students with their magicks. Actually, I wasn’t ever invited to the big parties, so maybe that did happen.

High School Musical
People who would run around golf courses singing about their feelings were the worst part of my high school experience.